How to create data-driven content marketing strategy that drives results?

At the time of creating a content marketing strategy, you should be mindful about the results that you can achieve out of it. Then you can ensure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. To ensure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, you can think about developing it based on data. Keep on reading, and we will share the steps that you should follow to create a data-driven content marketing strategy effectively.

What is a data-driven content strategy?

A data-driven content marketing strategy is where you use available data in order to come up with a content marketing strategy and ensure its overall effectiveness. You will strategically analyze data that you have and come up with the content marketing strategy. Due to the same reason, the chances of your content marketing strategy failing are less. You will be able to collect data from your targeted audience, who are most likely to purchase the product or service that you are offering to the market.

The data-driven content would use information gathered from the customer profiles so that you can create an effective content marketing strategy. Due to the same reason, you should be equipped with a proper strategy to collect customer data and then analyze them. Otherwise, you cannot get the most out of your data-driven content marketing strategy.

Why does your content marketing need to be data-driven?

When you develop a content marketing strategy out of available data, you will be taking out assumptions and emotions from the picture. Instead, you will be getting the most out of past experiences and improve them.

Before you start publishing content online, you will need to take a look at the key performance indicators. The three most prominent key performance indicators that you should be mindful about are traffic, engagement, and conversion.

You should determine who is viewing your content and how many people are viewing it. Then you will need to take a look at the engagement, where you can see whether people are responding to your content or not. You should also check and confirm whether your traffic is being converted or not.

What Data Do You Need to plan a Data-Driven Content Marketing Strategy?

The very first step you should follow when you are planning your data-driven content marketing strategy is to develop a buyer persona. Buyer persona refers to the ideal target customer of your business. After you set up a buyer persona, you will have a good understanding of what your customer would look like.

Then you can create content that is appealing to the buyer you have. In other words, you will find it easy to tweak the overall content marketing campaign when you have a clear understanding of the target audience. While keeping your ideal buyer in mind, you can personalize the blog posts, videos, and even other forms of content marketing campaigns that you run.

After creating the buyer persona, you should do data collection on customer demographics. This is where you will try to understand how much the existing audience fits into the buyer persona profiles you created. This will provide valuable information as you proceed with future planning.

For example, you can figure out what content your audience would love to enjoy and share. On the other hand, you can also understand what social platforms your buyers often use. You may also take a look at the purchasing cycles and consumer habits of your ideal customers.

Once you combine these details with the buyer persona, you will have enough information on the nature of content that you should create. On top of that, you will also know where to promote content and how to adjust the campaigns accordingly. This will help you understand the wants and needs of the customers. This can be the very first step that you follow to develop an effective data-driven content marketing strategy.

What Do You Need to Execute Data-Driven Content?

There are some essentials that you would need to execute the data-driven content marketing strategy. Here’s a clear overview of what you would need:

— Understand your customer

You should understand your customer before executing the data-driven content marketing strategy. During the data collection process, you can gather all useful data related to the interaction of customers with the brand. You should supplement that with external data sources and demographics. For example, you can conduct industry-related surveysand gather useful information. Based on these, you should include key insights to motivate the decision-makers.

— Creating the content briefs

You must ensure that every piece of content you create as part of your content marketing campaign includes a brief. The content brief should clearly outline the goals you have. Additionally, it should include a short summary of how the existing data is influencing the topic. You may also include details on the insights identified during the analysis stage.

For example, if you discover a specific keyword is trending and can impact your content marketing efforts, you should ensure that keyword is included within the content briefs.

— Start off with a benchmark.

You can improve your data-driven content marketing strategy by starting with a benchmark. Carefully assess where your content marketing strategy currently stands. You can evaluate the topics, performance, and the channels driving the most engagement. Then, set goals based on your strengths and weaknesses.

— Mapping the content.

You must have a proper content map as part of your content marketing strategy, influenced by the data you have. The content map helps you configure how each piece of content aligns with the customer journey stage.

With data-driven insights, you can improve this alignment. This will provide essential business intelligence related to which types of content deliver the best results. Based on that, you can effectively push prospects down the sales funnel.

— Have a solid data framework.

During the data collection process, you will follow multiple strategies to gather information. However, you should ensure that the data doesn’t stay in silos. Instead, make sure it is available on a centralized platform. This can be achieved easily with the support of a content marketing software.

The content marketing software you use will provide a feature to capture content from multiple streams. Then you can map it along with buyer responses. For example, consider using Google Analytics to track page views.

This helps you understand which topics interest potential customers the most. Similarly, you can identify the most successful channels in driving traffic to your content marketing campaigns. Append this data with other insights, such as email marketing statistics and ecommerce activities.

— Ensure that you can pivot quickly.

In a fast-paced world, your business and industry will evolve quickly. This is why you need the ability to pivot swiftly. You can achieve this by ensuring agility in your content marketing campaigns.

You must be responsive to changes. If your data shows unexpected trends, think about pivoting for improvement. For instance, having well-defined content workflows and a content calendar helps you move swiftly and cover different subjects in a timely manner.

— Continuously measure and refine your campaign.

As you run your content marketing campaigns, you must continuously analyze buyer behavior and content performance in real time. As you collect more data, feed it into your content plan. This helps you refine your content marketing strategy over time.

How to check if your data-driven strategy is working?

Now you know how to create your data-driven content marketing strategy. However, you can’t just implement it and expect results—you must check whether the strategy is working. Here are some proven methods to assess its effectiveness:

Analyze the traffic sources.

One of the best ways to check if your data-driven content marketing strategy is working is to analyze the traffic sources. This helps you see if your content is driving traffic to your website or landing pages. Tools like Google Analytics can help with this.

Analyze your social traffic.

If you’re promoting content on social media, you need to analyze social traffic. You can even dive deeper to identify which social media networks are generating the most traffic. Then, you can focus on those platforms and refine your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Check the positive impact on your business.

You should also analyze how your business is progressing from the traffic generated. For instance, you can check for improvements in sales or whether you’re generating more quality leads. A data-driven content marketing strategy can also enhance customer loyalty and customer retention.

Now you have a solid understanding of how to develop a data-driven content marketing strategy. Follow these steps to build the best strategy possible. The efforts you invest in gathering and analyzing data will pay off.